The first fanzine published by C.S."Sam" Youd (rhymes with 'crowd' not 'rude'), then of
Hampshire, THE FANTAST was later
taken over by Douglas Webster. I can give no better intro to it than was written
by Harry Warner Jr and which can be found
here.

It was the custom of UK newspapers of the period to have columnists who wrote under
pseudonyms such as 'Beachcomer', a custom fanzines also adopted. There was much speculation
over who THE FANTAST's 'Fantacynic' could be, hence some of the incorrect references to him
under other names in the lettercolumns. It was in fact Sam Youd himself. As he wrote in a
letter of comment on THEN #1:

"I was never a visitor to
the Flat - in mid-teens I couldn't afford the fare from Hampshire to London. My
first trip was a special one, to the '39 convention, and I had to leave before
the end to catch my train back. There was some comment that Fantacynic could not
be me because he referred to events taking place after my departure; but I did
have a good stringer in John Burke."

Below is a listing of all the issues and these will turn into live links as each
is posted online. At the moment I'm planning on an issue going up every one or two weeks,
but we shall see.